Wednesday, July 19, 2006

How Do You Decide When To Care?

Mayor Rocky Anderson hosted a candlelight vigil for Elizabeth Smart 4 days after her disappearance
Ed Smart said: "We really appreciate Rocky. He has just been there every step of the way in supporting us"
Mayor Anderson left yesterday with no statement on Destiny Norton and no plans to get involved beyond having "full faith in the police".
Don't you think Destiny Norton's family would love their Mayor to "be there every step"?
What about "a few of the steps"?

It's oh, so painfully true what you've said. Rich people "Rock the Casbah" in this world and the poor get it in the rear end. Good times. I really feel for this little girl and her family. This one hits close to home, literally. This family lives less than a block away from me. I hope that the mayor and others in the community actually step up to the plate on this one.

Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.

And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.

You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.

In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.

You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered.

How will you live your life?

What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)?

The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. [...]

Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.

If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. [...]

Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population....

The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered "alarmingly high," is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.

The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 4 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.

Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system.

We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.

Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish.

Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person.

Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.

The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender.

What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference betwen an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity.

What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions. [Martha Stout, Ph.D., The Sociopath Next Door] (highly recommended)

Ah yes. They ARE all too cool for the low income families.- But what the hell does it matter anyway?What really gets me is that these people ACTUALLY let their FIVE YEAR OLD walk out the front door- UNATTENDED. What the hell kind of devil parent lets their child go outside ALONE??? If I were that VOID of intelligence, I'd be kicking MY OWN ASS the rest of my damn life. I have children and as a parent with a BRAIN, I believe these people need to be beaten severely.

Yes, we should lock all of our children inside the home unless mommy and daddy can go holding their hand every step of the way.

Any time we see children under the age of 15 unaccompanied by an adult we should call the police and make sure those evil parents are locked up forever. Even if the kids are in their own yard and mommy and daddy are not outside within three feet.

The problem is not the parents. The problem is that child molesters run free. We should chop of their manhood as punishment. Oh wait, I can't say that. They have feelings and rights too. We can't be mean to them so we should let them go and live in our neighborhoods and rape all the little boys and girls. Then each time they get caught we will just relocate them.

Shame on the parents for thinking their home is a safe place. Shame on the parents for letting their child get taken out of their own front yard. Shame on the parents for letting the molester rape their kid. Put the parents in jail because it is really their fault.

It's not like they don't have enough problems right now and then you go blaming them. That is low.

Anon-Apparently you're NOT a parent.- Obviously. Any NORMAL parent would make sure, as I do and so many others with a brain, that their children are not left UNATTENDED outside -EVER. BECAUSE of the child-molesters, freaks and psychos that walk the Goddamned streets ALL THE TIME> What the fuck would you give someone even the most REMOTE chance to take YOUR child for? The intervention SHOULD be with these Goddamned stupid parents.

The murder and abuse of this child and other children brings up all kinds of feelings of fear in us.

Dr. John Malouf, Valley Mental Health Psychologist, with whom I used to work, was quoted on KSLTV (paraphrased) as saying that the public has a need to blame or find reasons for what happened. We like the world to be predictable.

Also, anyone who has ever been quoted by the news media knows that reporters misrepresent events, people, and quotes.

We don't really know what happened to this little girl and her family. And we certainly aren't going to find out by reading the papers and watching local t.v.